Sri Lanka is now standing ready to unlock the IMF Extended Fund Facility arrangement as all prior actions of the program have been completed, the Central Bank Chief said.
"We are now standing ready to unlock the IMF program," CBSL Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe told reporters in Colombo.
"Although we raised policy rates, we would expect the gap between the policy rates and market rates would be reducing and converging."
Weerasinghe added that the guidance band on the exchange rate will be removed next Monday and there will be no mandatory purchases from the Central Bank from Monday.
"The whole idea is to get the forex market activated. We want to see a very active forex market again," he said.
"We have seen a gradual improvement in the forex liquidity in the banking sector.
We already stopped selling from the Central Bank for CPC, CEB, etc. For the last five days of this week, we have purchased over USD 308mn from the market."
Related: Central Bank raises Policy Interest Rates by 100 basis points to finalize IMF-EFF arrangement